Adrien Agreste and Alya Cesaire had been neck-and-neck in grades ever since he'd spawned out of nowhere that first day of lycée. Given she was always trying to balance her excessive livejournal usage and expensive comics collecting with equal amount of parent-pleasing displays of "applying herself", Alya always had something to prove with her grades: Adrien, conversely, seemed like he only had something to maintain.
He was perfect, suspiciously perfect—Always raised his hand first, never spoke unless spoken to, and spent every lunch reading alone no matter who invited him to what table. It was that air of well-kept, polite mysteriousness (and a jawline that could cut glass) that apparently swept Alya's good friend Marinette head over heels. But Alya had never been someone to take a person at their word. Good journalism means more than just believing, it means proving.
And there was no proof in the world so far that Adrien's teflon shell was more than skin deep. Quite the contrary, actually.
It had been in their last French Literature class, on a dreary Tuesday morning still shaking off the rain from the night before. Nothing good ever happens on Tuesdays: They either surprise you on Monday to make up for the week beginning, or they show up on Wednesday to push you through the rest of it. The point was, Alya wasn't expecting to get much joy out of recent test results to begin with.
She studied the paper. Sixteen, Trés bien. One of the best possible marks in the class, which was standard fare. Seventeens and eighteens and even nineteens were ludicrous, and, as many teachers were pleased to put it, "a twenty is perfection, and none of you are God". Sixteen was great.
Alya tapped the back of her pen on the paper, right beside the red ink sixteen, and looked over to where Marinette and Nino sat. They were talking with the others, Nathaniel and Juleka and such—Fourteens, Fifteens, Fourteen-point-twos and so on. Not as good as Alya, but still good enough. Her friends didn't need to chase after grades the way she did, so their platitudes about the numbers being trivial was refreshing.
Of course, then Adrien walked past. He had been sat in the back of the class for the entire year as if lording over the other students with a watchful eye. Every time he made his way up or down the steps, students would turn their head as if his mere presence was some grand procession.
It wasn't just that he had gotten sixteen-point-three that angered Alya. (But sixteen point three was bad enough. Sixteen point three! Apparently there was some magically insightful commentary that Mme. Bustier thought was worth him beating Alya out by three points. Unbelievable.)
In a split second, Alya could swear Adrien glanced at Alya's paper and then to her, and—though nobody would ever believe her on it, not even for a second—she had heard the quietest, most imperceptible scoff.
"He's an asshole!' Alya had proclaimed to Marinette later that week, in between shoving Dupain-Cheng cookies in her mouth. "I swear it's all an act. I know what I heard."
"Alya," Marinette pouted. "This is Adrien we're talking about. The guy who can't even bring himself to squash spiders?"
"Him bringing spiders outside doesn't necessarily mean anything," Alya retorted. "Assholes can still like spiders."
"Well... Maybe it wasn't him that day. Maybe he has a secret evil twin or something, and it wasn't him there after all."
Alya plucked another cookie from the plate Mme. Cheng had given them, taking a furious bite of it. "Now that's just unrealistic."
Marinette only shrugged.
Alya continued to simmer while chewing on her cookie. She could practically imagine Adrien's words to his father now: "Alya got sixteen because that's all she could get. I got sixteen-point-three because that's all there was to get." Point three, point three, point three. He didn't need that extra point three. For what it was worth, he didn't need good grades at all! Adrien could just as easily continue modeling for the rest of his life.
"I need to catch him slipping up somehow," Alya muttered. "Show him I'm not falling for this 'Immaculate Mr. Perfect' charade of his."
"Well, if that's what you want to do." Marinette grabbed a cookie of her own, adding "But I don't know if you're going to get anywhere. He really is that perfect."
snowghoul
prguitarman
discoholicmusic
pixelskylines
baratheonpilled
germansingergirl
jacobvanloon
2087
kaledo-art
